I attended a 9:40 showing at a multiplex on Akron's west side. I was the only one in the theater in which the Stooges film was shown. That was pretty weird. I've been to a few showings at such multiplexes where very few people showed up. But this was the first time I'd watched a movie in a theater completely alone. Would they have shown it at all if I hadn't been in there? Is this a koan?

I liked the movie but I didn't love it. I wanted to love it. But I couldn't. Here's what was good about the movie. Larry David was terrific as Sister Mary-Mengele, a nun who bears the brunt of most of the Stooges outlandish behavior. All of the actors who play the Stooges do a tremendous impressions of the real guys, particularly Chris Diamantopoulos as Moe. He really has the voice and the mannerisms down. And there were some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. I'm usually not the type who LOLs at movies even when there's an audience in the theater with me. But I actually laughed aloud several times during my private screening.

But maybe I came to the film with too many fanboy hopes. See, if I were to make a Three Stooges movie, I would recreate some of the iconic Stooge moments. I'd have Curly trap himself in a maze of pipes while trying to fix a leak. I'd have Moe do the Niagara Falls routine. I'd have them do the maharaja routine. I'd hire Samuel L. Jackson in a cameo to do Dudley Dickerson's "This house has sho' gone crazy" line. I'd get someone to say "Hold hands you love birds." I'd also put in some references to Shemp, Joe Besser and Curly Joe DeRita. There is one scene in the movie where a rat makes Shemp's trademark "Eep-eep-eep" sound. But that's as close as we get. Maybe I'd have them get a sandwich at De Rita's Delicatessen or have them meet a character who does Joe Besser's effeminate mannerisms and make something out of how that would play in the 21st century.

The Farrelly Brothers seem to understand that part of the key to the Stooges' humor is all about the lower classes making fun of the upper class. But they never really take it far enough. The representatives of the upper classes are bad people because they're plotting a murder. In the Stooges' films the upper classes were always just twits because they were twits. Not that the Stooges were intrinsically better. I think what I like best about the Stooges' films is that in them everybody is an idiot, even the main characters (the Stooges) you're supposed to identify with.

It's funny to see the Stooges portrayed as they were in the 1930s having to come to terms with contemporary American society — like having Curly try to use an iPhone and Moe getting cast on The Jersey Shore. But even these feel a bit half-hearted. Why not do a whole movie about this? It's never really explained why the Stooges alone dress, talk and act like people from the 1930s while everyone else exists in 2012. I kept wondering if these bits were left over from some unused version of the script in which the Three Stooges time travel to our era.

All in all, it's a good movie, but not a great one. Am I weird for thinking there actually could be a great movie about The Three Stooges?

it is incredible how patiently and consistently the fake Buddhists keep attacking Brad, I am fed up with you, fake fakist non Buddhists, read this you silly pseudopeople, hahaha, if i believed in hell, you would definitely be fried like Mc Donald's fries http://myogen.blogspot.com/2012/04/ugly-dirty-buddhists.html

'S: What is the significance of reverse breathing? Do you recommend practicing reverse breathing frequently throughout the day, or would it be better to only practice this when doing Spring Forest Qigong exercises?

CL: Reverse Breathing is a very beneficial technique in balancing your body's energy. In Reverse Breathing you pull your lower stomach in a little as you inhale and let it out a little as you exhale. The upper part of the body belongs to yang energy; the lower part of the body belongs to yin energy. Breathing in is a part of yin energy; breathing out is yang. One of the reasons we get sick is that yin and yang energies are not communicating well. By pulling your lower stomach in as you inhale and letting it out as you exhale, you are enhancing the communication of the yin and yang energies. When you do Reverse Breathing focus on your skin that is even better.

While I believe Reverse Breathing is the most beneficial way to breathe and I breathe this way all of the time do not get caught up in trying to breathe this way if it is challenging for you. Remember, we teach Good, Better and Best. It is more helpful for you to relax than to be stressed over how you breathe.

Breathing slowly, gently and deeply is the most important thing. This automatically helps your body to relax. It helps expand your lung capacity enabling you to uptake more oxygen which is critically important since oxygen is your body's number one fuel and you get most of it from breathing.'

Shoulda said that what I found significant in the Chunyi Lin response was his statement, "I breathe this way all of the time", and his mention of "reverse breathing (with a) focus on your skin".

I personally don't believe in instructions that advocate specific action in the meditative arts. I think most of the folks with mastery who instruct in this way do so in the belief that it's helpful to beginners, and maybe I'm nuts for believing that the instruction to the beginner should be the same instruction the person with mastery would want to receive themself. Gautama's fourfold setting up of mindfulness has only two overt actions: 1) relax the activity of the body (in the in-breath or the out-breath); 2) calm the activity of mind (similarly, in the in-breath or in the out-breath).

It is bloody annoying, isn't it? How stupid people can be. How 'fake'. How people who are so clearly wrong insist that they're right. How people who don't get it are so sure they do. But what are you gonna do? They think the same about you.

There's nothing wrong with confessing contempt for pseudo-people, fast food junkies and other low-life fakes. I share your frustration, your contempt. I confess it. But confessing and reflecting on, not indulging and rejoicing in, is what needs to be done with stuff like that, I think.

People are different. Different people want different things from philosophy and religion. Maybe different people need different things from philosophy and religion.

Anyway, did Brad get 'attacked' for the DSI announcement? Not so much, as I recall...If he did, that'll have been some folks taking a leaf out of our book ;)

I love watching movies when I'm the only one in the theater. That happened to me a couple months ago, but I can't remember what movie I watched. I know I liked it a lot though. I think I'm going senile.

The trouble with meditation practice is that once the novelty wears off, meditation is troubling and unsatisfying. There's a feeling that you aren't doing it quite right. And you're staring down a tunnel with no end in sight. Actually that feeling is a feature and not a bug. It's great doubt's little brother, nagging doubt.

But there is a downside, sometimes people repress this sense of doubt and project it outwards on others. When in the grip of this projection, you are the "good Buddhist" and everyone else is lazy, degenerate, clueless, or whatever. It's quite a fix to be in. I often say the worst thing that can happen to a practitioner is to become a "good Buddhist."

"Roman" generalized his frustration...108 made his specific to a particular individual.

Not at all. Unless you mean me.

I suspect Roman(real name) was just giving his blog post a provocative plug, but I share his frustration. I have concerns about where such frustration comes from, what it is and the usefulness of expressing it. Those are the points I wanted to make, the issues I sought to raise. I was talking to myself as much as to him. Obviously.

So now you're frustrated with Roman and his sick fucking shit. Fair dos. Call it as you see it.

But gentleness aside, isn't the whole point of this Buddhist business to find out something true and useful about ourselves rather than be getting pissed off at the stupidity of others and pointing out their faults? There's no end to that kind of thing.

A number synonymous with evil; a number that can represent and manifest evil; an evil omen; often identified with cult practices The killer's identity was obviously foreshadowed when he stayed in room 108.

According to the dead sea scrolls, the anti-christ's birthday will be on October 8th (the tenth of August in Europe).

anon, I was half joking in the post here, but not joking in my article

of course, i don't hate anyone just saying my opinion of ppl who claim they are buddhists and Brad for them is not good enough etc. of course, they will go to hell if they are not honest and sincere enough, but that's not my problem, i am not frustrated about someone going to hell, no compassion here for them

"Gospel of Thomas is clearly influenced by Buddhist ideas"- there are many things in Thomas expressed in a way not heard in the Pali Suttas, to my knowledge. Here's some:

'when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female (not) be female, when you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, (and) an image in the place of an image, then shall you enter [the Kingdom].'

"Throughout the exhibit, a huge amount of emphasis is placed on a small group of Scrolls researchers sometimes refer to as “sectarian.” To their credit, the organizers seem reluctant to directly support the old idea that the Scrolls were written by Essene monks in the desert near the caves where they were discovered, since that idea may well have been debunked in recent years. But they still make all sorts of gestures in that direction, and this is where they start to make false, misleading, and erroneous statements.

A theme thus keeps on popping up that, as the exhibit’s curator Dr. Risa Levitt Kohn puts it in her introduction to the exhibit catalogue, the Scrolls “illustrate the rituals and practices of a unique community.” The term “the community” appears over and over, even though writings sometimes tied to such a single “community” are only a tiny proportion of the Scrolls, which actually seem to have been written by many different Jewish groups." source

Unfortunately, there remains a Jewish-centric view of the scrolls by some. The idea that this was either an Essenian or Zealot community was long ago discredited and even "the community" notion is a bit misleading.

The genetic information turned up some intriguing findings, indicating that at some point after early modern humans migrated out of Africa, they mingled and mated with Neanderthals, possibly in the Middle East or North Africa as much as 80,000 years ago.

Assuming, for the moment, that my mother's mother's mother's mother was a "jew," then there is indeed the Neanderthal-human interspecies mating I wrote of earlier. I think it is a reasonably safe assumption.

Neanderthals wore jewelry and had ritualized burials. There is a preponderance of archaeological evidence to support that claim. I wear a wedding ring, therefore I am of [at least partial] Neanderthal descent.

Thus the dumb religious ones mixed with the smart 'natural' ones - that left their dead to be cecycled by birds and other scavengers - and we got Abraham in the Near East and the whole tribal inter-fighting mess.

*There is a saying regarding Solomon's Temple: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absense." more

The absence of evidence is a justifiable reason for doubt. If you don't understand that, then you might believe that the efficacy of homeopathy is more statistically significant than just the placebo effect.

THAT is why reasoning and critical thinking need to be developed at a young age (in progressive elementary schools) and maintained through maturity (in liberal high schools and colleges) and in later life (by using your analytic crap detector).

If your Valentine's Day plans involve picking out a box of chocolates for someone special, your best choice for your loved one’s heart might be dark chocolate. The cacao bean contains more than 400 chemicals, and many of them can affect human health. One group of chemicals, the flavonoids, are responsible for many of the protective actions of dark chocolate, reports the February issue of Harvard Men's Health Watch.

Flavonoids are present in many healthful foods, like apples and cherries, but dark chocolate is the richest source. So it’s no surprise that chocolate has attracted the interest of scientists from around the world, giving the research an international flavor. Most studies have concentrated on cardiovascular health; here are some representative findings:

Endothelial function. The endothelium, the thin inner layer of arteries, is responsible for producing nitric oxide, a chemical that widens blood vessels and keeps their linings smooth. European studies have shown that dark chocolate improves endothelial function in healthy people, that flavonoid-rich cocoa can reverse the endothelial dysfunction produced by smoking, and that dark chocolate may improve coronary artery function in heart transplant patients.

Blood pressure. Studies from Italy, Argentina, Germany, and the United States show that dark chocolate can lower blood pressure, though the effect is modest. The benefit wears off within a few days of stopping “treatment” with a daily “dose” of dark chocolate.

Blood clotting. Most heart attacks and many strokes are caused by blood clots that form in critical arteries. Researchers in Switzerland and the United States found that dark chocolate reduces platelet activation, a step in clot formation.

More research is needed to confirm these preliminary findings and to learn if they translate into sustained health benefits. And remember that there is a dark side to dark chocolate: calories.

"A total of 156 RCTs [Randomized Controlled Trials] in homeopathy (on 75 different medical conditions) have been published in good quality scientific journals. 41% of the RCTs have a balance of positive evidence, 7% have a balance of negative evidence, and 52% have not been conclusively positive or negative."

"The above figures have similarities to data obtained from an analysis of 1016 systematic reviews of RCTs (and therefore of many more than that number of RCTs in total): 44% of the reviews concluded that the interventions studied were likely to be beneficial (positive), 7% concluded that the interventions were likely to be harmful (negative), and 49% reported that the evidence did not support either benefit or harm (non-conclusive)."

"In 1853, Mary Baker Glover married Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist who proved to be unreliable and unfaithful. He abandoned her in 1866, and, after years of living apart, she divorced him in 1873 on grounds of desertion.

Struggling with chronic illness compounded by personal loss, Mary Patterson was preoccupied with questions of health. Like many in her day, she avoided the harsh treatments of conventional nineteenth-century medicine and its dangerous side effects. She sought relief in various alternative treatments of the day, from diets to hydropathy (water cure). During Patterson’s long absences, she studied homeopathy in depth and became intrigued by its emphasis on diluting drugs to the point where they all but disappear from the remedy. At one point, she experimented with unmedicated pellets (now known as placebos) and concluded that a patient’s belief plays a powerful role in the healing process. While investigating such new cures, she continued to seek comfort and insights in the Bible, still drawn by the healing record contained in its pages."

"In her later writings she consistently described herself as having practiced homeopathic medicine quite extensively, and she pointed to her experiments with homeopathy as being crucial to the development of her understanding of healing as something that occurs quite independently of "materia medica," whether full strength or in homeopathically attenuated solutions. Thus in the third edition of Science and Health (1881) Mrs. Eddy describes how she cured a woman of dropsy, first using homeopathic remedies in the prescribed attenuations but then successfully substituting unmedicated pellets."

"A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed, and yet, as she lay in her bed, the patient looked like a barrel. I prescribed the fourth attenuation of Argentum nitratum with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the ordinary theories of medical practice, and learning that her former physician had prescribed these remedies, I began to fear an aggravation of symptoms from their prolonged use, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine while she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her unmedicated pellets and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain. Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one day, and risk the effects. After trying this, she informed me that she could get along two days without globules; but on the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by taking them. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets,--and receiving occasional visits from me,--but employing no other means, and she was cured."

Wow! I see Jinzang is commenting again here. I may even start to read this blog once more.

"But there is a downside, sometimes people repress this sense of doubt and project it outwards on others. When in the grip of this projection, you are the "good Buddhist" and everyone else is lazy, degenerate, clueless, or whatever."

A great point by master J, but I'll bet he doesn't see this as applying to B.W. as usual. Being a good buddhist is like practicing true zen while imagining others practice or teachings are degenerate, clueless, lazy, etc. Love the stooges.

Curly was a Zen master. When Larry asked him if he would rather be burned at the stake or or have his head chopped off, Curly said burned at the stake. Larry said why? Curly said "Because a hot steak is better than a cold chop"!